


The Body Exhibit

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-13
Updated: 2010-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel has taken too many vessels to count - he is made of bodies, but none of them are his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Body Exhibit

  
Angels are made of bodies: the bodies that they take and the bodies that they leave behind them.

They aren't like humans. They don't have souls – not in the traditional sense of the word. When an angel dies, it's like when a machine is scrapped. There are a thousand more to takes its place and its passing isn't mourned. Angels are not, strictly speaking, people. That does not mean they don't want to be.

But angels, strictly speaking, are nothing more than bodies, and the concentrated power of God.

~

Gabriel is the first of the archangels to take a vessel, the first to appear to humans in a guise that they can immediately recognize. He is honored – Yochanan will be a great man, a powerful speaker, and an influential saint. He will be immortalized for his deeds and words. It is Gabriel's duty, as messenger, to foretell the man's greatness. To be there when he is born, as a herald.

The vessel he takes is male. Blonde, and boyishly handsome. He wears woolen robes that have been meticulously scrubbed; the cloth is almost white, if viewed in the proper light.

Gabriel will regret this later, when humans discover egg tempera. And mosaics. And acrylic paints.

~

"What's it like?" Michael asks. "Taking a vessel."

"Different," Gabriel says. "It's hard to explain."

"Try."

Gabriel tries. But no matter how he explains it, he can't get Michael to understand the concept of being both grounded and free.

~

There are many visits to Earth, after that, by Gabriel, and by others. Humans don't realize it, not unless they're one of those chosen by God, but angels walk amongst them, getting used to the sensation of having limbs, dutifully dressing themselves in clothing that very rarely makes much (if any) sense, and attempting to blend in as best they can.

There are a handful of angels who take to humanity like ducks to water – Castiel, Barachiel, Abdiel. Others find it intensely perplexing (Michael and Uriel spring immediately to mind), and prefer to remain in Heaven, attending to matters closer to God.

Gabriel doesn't understand how Michael can look down on humans, after everything that's happened.

But Gabriel doesn't understand many things, like fighting, or alcohol, or why he feels as if he's being granted a reprieve every time he takes a vessel.

~

Castiel is the youngest of Gabriel's brothers. He's full of fervor and light and love for their Father, and Gabriel does not begrudge him that, but neither does he allow himself to be influenced by it. Gabriel has seen enough bloodshed to last several human lifetimes – he is not eager to lose another brother, something that he fears will happen almost every single day.

"Do you ever wish that you could have a vessel that was only yours?" Castiel asks him. Once, though. Only once. "One that will always wait for you? No matter where you leave it?"

"All the time," Gabriel murmurs. He folds his wings beneath him like a pair of legs, and imagines what it would be like to be able to breathe the way humans do.

~

Gabriel has taken so many vessels that he has honestly lost count of them. Men, women, children – they've all blurred together. Most of them he's left in much the same condition as he took them…minus a few years of their lives, and maybe in a different country, but still. The same.

There have been a few that he has accidentally ruined. A few that couldn't handle him. A few bodies that just didn't fit quite right, and ended up splitting down the middle. Gabriel always feels a little melancholy, whenever that happens.

He should have made a better choice. He should have searched for the one that fit, instead of settling for one that was _almost_ right.

~

"Do you enjoy it?"

"Enjoy what?"

"Playing at being human."

Gabriel stares at Raphael, unblinking. After what seems an eternity, Raphael flinches, and looks away.

~

There comes a point where Gabriel has to leave.

He barely has a choice – his options narrow, grow increasingly less appealing, until all that's left is either to leave, or to let himself be buried beneath Michael's bitterness and grief. And Gabriel loves his brothers, he does, he loves them more than he will ever love himself…but he cannot sit idly by and watch them tear at each other. He cannot watch them grow more and more resentful every day.

Gabriel flees.

He doesn't try to justify it as anything other than cowardice.

~

It takes him a while. He has to search the lost places, the corners of the world that are still untouched. The frozen north and the humid south. He searches until he finds the perfect vessel, chained to a stone and writhing in pain, two of its sons dead and its wife miserable.

And then he gives it a choice.

~

Gabriel's new body is made out of the skin of an agonized god.

His wings are his own, but everything else that he has chosen to wrap himself in stinks of old magic and blood feuds and evergreen forests. He touches it and it thrums with power. He murmurs its name and the earth beneath its feet trembles.

"Loki," he says, and unfurls his wings, and lets himself break free of the ground.

~

His body is not entirely without its own influence. It is used to doing things a certain way, and Gabriel is adrift, and without purpose. He listens to the creaking of his vessel's bones, the whisper of its skin, and can think of nothing better to do with his time. And if it allows him to avoid the attention of his brothers, well. That's an added bonus.

By the time Gabriel meets the Winchesters for the first time he has made a name for himself, impersonating a god that lives on through him and the stories he engenders. The part of him that is Loki Laufeyjarson wants nothing to do with these children who hunt gods and monsters for a living.

The part of him that is Gabriel, will always be Gabriel, is intrigued.

He spends more time thinking about it than he should.

~

"You made a choice, once," Castiel tells him. "A choice to abandon your brothers."

Gabriel scuffs at the scorch marks on the floor of the warehouse, ash covering the toe of his boot. He can still smell the holy oil. "I'm just so sick of the fighting," he whispers. "I want it to end."

"Then make the right choice, this time," Castiel says. His exit is marked by the flutter of tattered and ancient wings.

Gabriel kneels down beside the circle that trapped him, and cradles his borrowed head in his borrowed hands.

~

"Oh, I'm loyal. To them."

"Who? These so-called gods?"

"To people, Lucifer. People."

"So, you're willing to die…for a pile of cockroaches? Why?"

"Because Dad was right. They are better than us."

"They are broken, flawed, abortions!"

"Damn right, they're flawed. But, a lot of 'em try to do better. To forgive."

~

Angels are made of bodies: the ones that they take, and the ones that they leave behind. They are power cradled by fragile human flesh – flesh that is not even theirs to begin with. Flesh that must be given freely to them. Angels are not terribly substantial.

But occasionally they are capable of making themselves into something more.


End file.
